Maria Schrader

Franz

The life of Franz Kafka in a series of independent chapters: from his birth in 19th-century Prague to his final years in Berlin and death in 1924, and his imagined future.

Sukowa - Playful Like A Child

“Acting is something anyone can do,” says Barbara Sukowa. “It’s completely intuitive and instinctual, much like a child dressing up.” Those who have worked with her say that what she does is true artistry. Barbara Sukowa, a star of Fassbinder’s films, an icon, and a role model. Who says there are hardly any interesting roles for women beyond forty? New challenges continually come her way. A few years past normal retirement age, she is launching into a remarkable new chapter. Sukowa – Spielen wie ein Kind (Barbara Sukowa – playful like a child) chronicles the path of an internationally successful actress to this day.

Kulenkampffs Schuhe

Essay film about German family life in the postwar decades, refracted through TV quiz shows and their hosts' biographies.

Hanni & Nanni 4

After plotting a way to get kicked out of boarding school, the twins diverge for the first time in their lives when Nanni starts enjoying her stay.

Lose My Self

The film tells the story of longtime married couple Lena and Tore, who need to deal with Lena's sudden lost of biographical memory due to amnesia.

Schwestern

The happening of a ceremonial robing of the youngest daughter as a novice in a Swabian convent screws up the values of a modern family. As if life wasn't complicated enough anyway. And how are you supposed to be happy without new clothes?

In Darkness

A dramatization of one man's rescue of Jewish refugees in the Nazi-occupied Polish city of Lvov. In Darkness tells the true story of Leopold Soha who risks his own life to save a dozen people from certain death. Initially only interested in his own good, the thief and burglar hides Jewish refugees for 14 months in the sewers of the Nazi-occupied town of Lvov (formerly Poland).

The Crocodiles: All for One

“The Crocodiles” are back and they are in for quite an adventure! Frank is seriously hurt and needs a liver donation. In order to save him, the gang needs to get Frank’s brother out of prison. Their plan is risky and the stakes are high.

The Crocodiles Strike Back

New summer adventure of the Crocodiles, who set up their detective skills to find out who is behind the accidents of the factory where Ollie and Mary's parents work , which could mean the closure of the plant, the move of the family and the dissolution of the gang.

The Crocodiles

Ten-year-old Hannes, growing up with his young, poor and single mother wants to join the coolest gang in the area, the Vorstadtkrokodile. When the ‘entry test’ goes wrong, Hannes’s life is saved by Kai, who is desperate to join too but is wheelchair bound and unable to even run away when things get hot. Hannes would accept Kai but the other gang members don’t seem happy to accept a handicapped member...

Munich (Filmfest) Stories - 25 years of Munich Filmfest

A cheerful, amusing and melancholic look back at the Munich film festival from the perspective of the people who make up the film festival.

A Life in Suitcases

Follows Tulse Luper as he is swept into the ill-fortuned tides of the 20th century and forced to spend his life in a succession of imprisonments.

Snowland

Based on the novel Hohaj by Elisabeth Rynell, it depicts the devastation felt by Elizabeth, a woman who had lost her husband in a car accident and wants to leave her three young children to join him in death by wandering out into the snowy deserts of Lapland. As she wanders through the snow, Elizabeth discovers the story of Aron and Ina, a couple who overcame dark secrets and over-controlling family members to be with each other.

The Tulse Luper Suitcases, Part 2: Vaux to the Sea

The Tulse Luper Suitcases reconstructs the life of Tulse Luper, a professional writer and project-maker, caught up in a life of prisons. He was born in 1911 in Newport, South Wales and presumably last heard of in 1989. His life is reconstructed from the evidence of 92 suitcases found around the world - 92 being the atomic number of the element Uranium. The project includes three feature films, a TV series, 92 DVDs, CD-ROMs, and books.

Rosenstrasse

When Ruth's husband dies in New York, in 2000, she imposes strict Jewish mourning, which puzzles her children. A stranger comes to the house - Ruth's cousin - with a picture of Ruth, age 8, in Berlin, with a woman the cousin says helped Ruth escape. Hannah, Ruth's daughter engaged to a gentile, goes to Berlin to find the woman, Lena Fisher, now 90. Posing as a journalist investigating intermarriage, Hannah interviews Lena who tells the story of a week in 1943 when the Jewish husbands of Aryan women were detained in a building on Rosenstrasse. The women gather daily for word of their husbands. The film goes back and forth to tell Ruth and Lena's story. How will it affect Hannah?

I'm The Father

Marco and Melanie, a young married couple, are living a life of passion, chaos, and all the little frustrations of everyday existence. Their love for each other seems like a beacon on heavy seas. But career pressure, burned toast, and dirty laundry are eroding all tenderness, and they never seem to find enough time for their six-year-old son, Benny, either. Their world is about to fall apart when Melanie moves out, taking Benny with her. She files for divorce, and Marco makes a decision that is not only going to change his own life. He suddenly discovers his own unique way of being a father … I’m the Father is a modern portrait of a generation which appears to fail its own ambitions: After all, how do you combine a job, children, love and all the other challenges of everyday life – without giving yourself up in the process? And then what happens when positions become entrenched and a divorce seems inevitable?

The Nibelungs

A filmed stage play of The Nibelungs.

Advertising Rules!

Edward Kaminsky, an aging ad man, wants a golden parachute from his agency; he must first land the Opel auto contract. Rosa, a youth with wealthy parents, wants to establish herself as an artist. The clumsy and enthusiastic Viktor, not quite honest, wants work. When he wanders into Kaminsky's meeting with Opel and says something about irony, the Opel director wants him in on the campaign. Then he steals an idea from Rosa that the Opel director loves. Before Rosa discovers he's expropriated her idea, Rosa and Viktor become lovers. Father-son feelings materialize between Kaminsky and Viktor. Can the impulsive Viktor hold it together before Rosa learns the truth and flies away?

Emil and the Detectives

The twelve-year-old Emil and his father are haunted by bad luck. To take a break from a series of family disasters, Emil is allowed to spend a few days with a friend of the family, the female priest Hummel in Berlin. In the train he runs across the slick Max Grundeis who anaesthetizes Emil and steals his savings of 1500 DM. When he finally arrives in Berlin, Emil and a gang of street kids, led by the cheeky girl Pony Hütchen, try to find the gangster, who haunts the posh Hotel Adlon as a hotel thief. Meanwhile, to prevent anyone from finding out about Emil's mishap, Gypsi, a member of the gang of kids, passes himself off as Emil, thus wreaking havoc on the home of the priest.

Josephine

Misadventures of a hapless young man from rural Bohemia who, in 1991, is finally free to cross newly open borders.

The Wedding Cow

Comedy - Flora (Isabella Parkinson) the librarian is hitchhiking to a job in a faraway town. Simplehearted plumber Tim (Oliver Reinhard) is headed to the Black Forest, a cow for his nuptials in tow. But when their paths intersect, the cow isn't the only one who loses its bearings. In this quixotic road movie, Flora is an endearing handful -- misplacing the cow, then adding a runaway to Tim's cargo load -- and soon Tim's wedding plans are fading from view. - Isabella Parkinson, Oliver Reinhard, Hannah

Aimée & Jaguar

In 1943, while the Allies are bombing Berlin and the Gestapo is purging the capital of Jews, a dangerous love affair blossoms between two women – one a Jewish member of the underground, the other an exemplar of Nazi motherhood.

Am I Beautiful?

Between Munich and Seville, the destinies of sixteen characters intertwine and intersect, missing each other or colliding head-on. They are all, without knowing it, at a pivotal moment in their lives...

The Giraffe

Lena Katz, who is German, and David Fish, who is American, are Jews who live in New York. When Lena's mother, who arrives from Germany, meets her at a hotel, she finds an almost-dead woman lying on the hotel floor. She accompanies the injured woman to the hospital and meets David, who is the woman's son. After David's mother dies from the injuries, a question remains: was she murdered? The trail leads to Germany. Apparently, Lena's mother has some kind of relationship with David's mother that reaches back into the dark German history of the 1940s

The Unfish

Sophie "inherits" her uncle's preserved whale and finds out that whoever sleeps in the whale's belly with her will be granted one wish, causing chaos and hatred in the village.

Flirt

The same situation is played out in different cities (New York, Berlin and Tokyo). A lover has to choose whether to commit to a partner who is returning home. In each case there are other people involved, an ex-partner and someone else in a "permanent" relationship, what do they choose to do?

Silent Night

Sensing their relationship is crumbling, Christian avoids celebrating Christmas with his girlfriend Julia and heads for Paris.

One of My Oldest Friends

Two inseparable friends with very different characters come to Munich to study and soon desire the same woman. The more reliable and down-to-earth one marries her and starts a family with her, but the more "exciting" and charming one also arouses her feelings, so that over the years they all suffer from their desires and "deprivations".

Burning Life

Anna and Lisa, two young women, meet by chance in the vestibule of a bank, and decide after that to go on together leaving a successful trail of bank-robberies through Germany.

Nobody Loves Me

On the brink of her 30th birthday, Fanny feels the door to marital happiness closing on her. She is obsessed with death and even visits evening classes on dying, so it seems fitting that she encounters a skeleton in the malfunctioning elevator of her apartment building. The skeleton is her neighbour Orfeo, a Black, gay, self-declared psychic, who convinces her that she is about to meet "him". But is it really Lothar, the new yuppie apartment manager ...?

Magic Müller

Mueller is a young and unsuccessful actor who has one big problem. He does not have time. He does not have time for his little daughter Elina and he does not have time for Petra who actually just wanted to make an interview with his room-mate Willy. Mueller is busy, always busy in every kind of situation. All his problems seemed to be solved when he realizes that Willy has invented a time-machine. Everything could be fine now, if just Mueller had listened better to Willy's warnings about the rules of time travelling.

Half the World

The sun blazes down from the sky with destructive power; exposing oneself to its light means death. People have transposed everyday existence to the night. In the metropolis of HALF WORLD a culture based on various languages and lifeforms has grown rampant. Everyone is looking for a way to survive.

Without Me

An aspiring documentary filmmaker named Simon Rosenthal tries to get some attention for his film about skinheads versus Turkish immigrants. However, as a Jewish man in today's Germany, his fears for the future prompt him to move to the moon.

My Name is Victor

No one knows, or is ever likely to know how many disabled or handicapped relatives have been hidden from the outside world in attics and basements over the years. In this wry comedy, Basile is an eleven-year old boy living in a rural French town (along with his mother) with his grandparents. He has the usual boyish adventures in town, punctuated with odd goings-on brought about by events which take place in his grandfather's crocodile farm. However, there is a deep rivalry between his grandmother and her wheelchair-bound half-sister, Cecile, who has kept hidden from the world (and her family), and has lived in the attic for decades. Basile eventually feels the wrongness of her situation and feels that he may be the reincarnation of Victor, Cecile's long-lost lover. Eventually things come to a head in a confrontation which provides the town gossips with material for years to come.

I Was on Mars

Silva fulfills herself a dream: from Poland she flies to USA. With only a few hundred dollars she arrives in New York, incapable of the language. Not long until the charming swindler Avi steals all her money - but she doesn't give up: She hunts him down, follows him around, demanding her money back.

RobbyKallePaul

After a quarrel Henry leaves the apartment. New fellow-lodger of Robby and Kalle becomes Paul. The three guys couldn't be more different, but nevertheless all of them have the same problem: women. When the mysterious Malu appears, each of them wonders if she may be their dream-woman.